


After The Incident

by andromedablacc (TheLittleGreenTypewriter)



Series: andromedablacc's imagine james and sirius prompts [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Back Together, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 05:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16510292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLittleGreenTypewriter/pseuds/andromedablacc
Summary: James normally forgives Sirius everything, but not this.





	After The Incident

**Author's Note:**

> For the [imagine James and sirius](imaginejamesandsirius.tumblr.com) prompt: "James is angry with sirius over the willow incident and breaks up with him. Can you write an account sort of the days (or weeks) that they spend with talking to each other? With them getting back together eventually. Sirius hurting and not eating and taking care of himself maybe? Thanks a lot."
> 
> There's not a lot of comfort in this fic and James is a bit weird regarding Sirius's previous self-harming and general mental health issues.

Sirius’s apology to Remus is so honest, so sincere that his voice breaks half way through and James almost forgives him on that alone. His boyfriend looks worse, if that’s even possible, than Remus, dark circles under his eyes and his hair up in a messy half-arsed bun. James wants to touch it, because he is weak for Sirius’s hair and always has been, but restrains himself as Remus forgives Sirius as easily as he would’ve done if he’d accidentally turned his nose blue - which has happened before. What Sirius has done this time is a lot worse. So much worse.

While they all might want Snivellus dead, Sirius has actually tried to make it happen, using Remus as his murder weapon, and James isn’t sure he deserves the easy forgiveness he always gets from them this time. James is, more than the other boys, always open to listening to Sirius’s reasoning, and more often than not, ready to defend him before he’s even heard it, but getting their already self-loathing werewolf friend to kill someone isn’t something he can defend at all. Rage fills him as Sirius says something he hasn’t been listening to, and the other two laugh like the whole thing is joke.

When Sirius had turned up at his parents house, battered and sobbing and bruised, James had finally learned that there was a line, in life, and what it meant to cross it. Since then, even though it was only a few months ago, James has been trying to be more mature, to see that there’s a line there, in the first instance, and to stop himself before he gets close to crossing it, because a woman who’d never realised there was a line not to be crossed had almost killed his favourite person in the whole world, and he had no idea how he’d have survived if she had. It had taken Sirius a little while longer, but he’d seemed to get it too, and James, seeing that they were finally on the same page, had taken all his Gryffindor courage and asked him out.

He’d never seen Sirius so happy in his entire life and it’d made every doubt he ever could have had about it vanish in an instant to see his favourite face glowing with pure joy. Having to save Severus Snape’s life because of Sirius’s lack of ability to see the line had brought every single one of them back, tenfold.

The doubts aren’t that he and Sirius shouldn’t be together; they are made for each other, and James is so in love with him, even if he hasn’t said so yet, that the idea of them not being together when all is said and done is enough to make him breathless, and not in a good way; the doubts are that they’ve moved a little too fast, that he should’ve waited until they were truly in sync, that they aren’t ready for this yet.

James watches the other three interact, silently seething at Sirius for doing this, and nearly as much at the other two for just forgiving him, just like that. When they’re thrown out of the hospital wing because it is well past visiting hours, nearly past curfew, James trails behind Peter and Sirius all the way up to the common room.

“Leave us for a minute,” he tells Peter just as he starts to walk up the stairs after Sirius. Peter spins to turn and stare at him, wide eyed at the anger simmering in his voice and goes to sit down on one of the armchairs without a word. Sirius doesn’t even turn, just carries on his merry way.

Sirius is talking about something, keeps talking when James shuts the door behind him and leans against it, his arms across his chest. James has no idea what he’s saying, can’t hear anything over the roaring in his ears. Eventually Sirius notices James’s glower from the corner of the room and swaggers over to him, his arms automatically going around James’s neck and leaning in for a kiss. James’s anger wavers for a second, he always softens at Sirius’s affection so freely given, but he stops himself and grips Sirius by the elbow when his lips are just a breath away.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks. Sirius stops, leans back just enough to look in James’s eyes and whatever he sees there is enough for him to take a step back.

“Snivellus wasn’t meant to actually find Remus, Prongs. And he’s fine, and Remus is fine. It was stupid, I know, but no harm done right?” James can’t believe he’s trying to brush it all off like this, like its nothing, a non-entity.

“Except Remus could have gotten to him before I did, Sirius, and your stupid decision could’ve made Remus a murderer.”

Sirius knows he’s in trouble when James calls him by his full name and draws away to sit on James’s bed. He seems to crumple, his arrogance from earlier stripped away to something more real, something James can forgive, if Sirius will let him.

“I know, I fucked up. I’m sorry. What else can I say? I’m sorry, Jamie.” His eyes meet James’s, all open and soft and sorry, and James just needs to understand why he did it, and he’ll forgive him like he always does. He goes and kneels at Sirius’s feet, wrapping a hand around each of his ankles.

“Why, Si? I thought we were done with Snape.”

Unexpectedly, Sirius’s vulnerability is gone as soon as the words leave James’s mouth, the mask James hasn’t seen just between the two of them in years back in place. He’s hiding something, and James can’t tell what, for the first time in many years, if not ever.

“Does it even matter? What’s done is done. I did it because I wanted to.” The lie sounds angry, like Sirius has any right to be, and James stands so he’s towering above him from where he’s still sitting on the bed.

“You gonna tell me the truth, or are you actually doing this?” All the softness Sirius had inspired on him burns away as his anger returns tenfold. Its bad enough that he’s fucked up this badly, but to lie to James about it? He’s not having it, not for a second.

Sirius stands. They’re almost the same height; if James were to lean forward exactly to kiss him, he’d just miss his bottom lip - right now it’s the last thing from his mind. If it’s been anyone else, he might have hit them, or hexed them, but not Sirius. He still has nightmares of Sirius bloody and bruised from his mother’s spells, the idea of doing anything like that to him makes him feel physically sick, and even if that wasn’t the case, he loves him, painfully so, sometimes.

“I’m not lying to you. I wanted to scare him, I made it happen, that’s it.” Sirius’s eyes are daring him to contradict the words, and James knows they’re a lie, but he has no proof of it.

After a moments silence, Sirius brushes past him and heads for the bathroom.

“Tell me what it really was now, or we’re done.”

Sirius stops dead, doesn’t turn towards him but he can see the shift in the way he’d holding his shoulders. James won’t stand being lied to, especially when he just wants to help, and he knows Sirius won’t risk losing him, not over this.

“I told you, there’s nothing else to it.”

“Guess we’re done then,” James is saying, his whole brain screaming at him to be silent, his heart constricting. The words are out, and he can’t take them back now.

“Guess we are,” Sirius says, voice tight and sharp as a knife, and he’s gone, disappearing into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him.

* * *

James cries himself to sleep, an ache in his chest ripping him open in a way he can’t seem to close. This is, without any plausible doubt, the worst possible outcome for their fight. What should’ve happened is this: Sirius should have admitted his reasoning as soon as they were alone together, James should have told him how awful it was, but that he understood, and that he forgave him, and then they should’ve stayed up most of the night kissing. Instead he wakes up with raw, sticky eyes, red from sobbing even in his sleep, and gets up to find Sirius already gone, even though its not seven o’clock yet, his bed only slightly crumpled, not enough to indicate he’d slept there at all.

He dresses and heads down to breakfast, ignoring the dread starting to settle like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He scans the Great Hall four times for Sirius’s silky black hair, and his heart leaps hopefully at the sight of it, over at the Slytherin table, before he realises it’s just Regulus. He eats slowly, trying to wait it out, to see if Sirius will turn up and only leaves when Peter tells him for the fourth time they’re late for class already.

When Sirius is upset, he forgets to look after himself. He’s always been the same, and up until fairly recently he’d done it occasionally even when no one had hurt him. For as long as he’d known him, James has been there to look after him instead, reading to him until he fell asleep, cajoling him into showering, eating and otherwise curling up in bed with him when he needed it. He doesn’t think Sirius would let him do that now if he tried. He wants to, even though they’re not together anymore, not even friends anymore and the anger is still there, bubbling under his skin.

Thankfully, Sirius is at classes, though he looks like death warmed up, which is more than has happened in the past. He ignores James completely, moving into Remus’s normal seat when he sits down beside him, but he speaks to Peter a little, who normally irritates Sirius to no end when he’s not in the best mood. With the knowledge that the situation isn’t as bad as he’d dreaded, James reaches for his anger again, lets it wash over him in a hot, prickly wave.

He can’t believe Sirius would let it come to this, not speaking, not eating, not sleeping, over telling him what’s really going on. Its either awful, so awful that he doesn’t trust James knowing what it is, which is ridiculous, since James knows everything about him, or that he honestly, genuinely has no reason for nearly getting Snape killed, and leaving James to save him. He’s not sure which option is worse.

* * *

 

That night, Sirius doesn’t go to dinner, and he doesn’t come up to bed at all, he just disappears off to detention after their last class. James dreams of Sirius holding a dagger to his throat.

“Why?” Dream-James asks.

“No reason,” Dream-Sirius replies, and kills him.

He wakes, tears streaming down his face, hand at his own neck. It’s a lie, in the way that many dreams are, because Sirius, even when they’re fighting, would never hurt him, ever, but it still leaves him feeling raw and wounded. Despite himself, he goes to snuggle into Sirius’s bed with him, because being with Sirius always clears his bad dreams. Not wholly unsurprisingly, he’s not there, the bed cold and in the same state as it was the morning before. He nicks Sirius pillow instead, as the next best thing. Sleep still evades him.

“How can you forgive him so easily,” he asks Remus when he goes to visit him in the hospital wing. Sirius has just left, and Remus doesn’t look annoyed or even particularly tired, like he sometimes does when Sirius is being deliberately taxing.

“Because we don’t expect better from him,” Remus replies, his expression exasperated, like it’s such a simple answer James should’ve known. “We don’t expect him to act like an adult all the time. You’ve decided he needs to be all responsible and caring, but that’s not Sirius. He’s too selfish for that.”

James is quiet after that. He’d figured out that Sirius hadn’t been ready for a real relationship, that he still needed to grow up a bit more, but Remus was saying it’d never happen; Sirius didn’t have the capacity to be who James was waiting for. The thought makes James’s heart ache, and he isn’t so sure growing up is worth having to give up Sirius.

* * *

 

The days continue on in much the same manner; James rises to find Sirius hasn’t slept, goes to eat and searches for him in the Great Hall to no avail, and then finds him looking thinner and more exhausted by the day, if not the hour, in their classes. He hates him again once he knows he’s there during the day, and cries for him each night, great gasping sobs that threaten to shake him apart entirely, though the hatred is starting to ebb away, faced with the thought of never getting his Sirius back.

When Remus returns to classes, their group seems to resettle onto different sides, James and Peter and Remus on one side and Sirius alone on the other. James knows at least Remus still speaks to him, but he doesn’t miss the hurt look on Sirius’s face when Peter brushes past him on the corridor between Transfiguration and Potions one day, his attention all on James. He looks awful, unshaven, unwashed perhaps, his uniform a crumpled mess, and his eyes are so sad James wants to cry just from looking at them.

The three of them are walking towards Charms one day after lunch, and James finds he can’t hate Sirius any longer, knowing they’re both miserable apart. He reacts the only way he knows how.

“I’ve had enough of fucking taking care of him!” he complains fervently to Remus, who says nothing, but looks extremely dubious. “It’s like having a baby! He’s a grown man, he knows he has to fucking eat.”

A little noise, so quiet he wouldn’t have heard it had Peter not been shocked into silence by his outburst, sounded behind them. James turned to see what it was, only to find Sirius walking in the opposite direction, his shoulders looking painfully tight. He doesn’t even show up to classes for the rest of the day, or the day after, and James thinks he’d kill Snape himself for Sirius not to have heard those lies.

* * *

 

He’s sitting at breakfast beside Peter on the third day of not seeing Sirius at all, barely picking at his porridge, when Remus comes running up to him, having stayed behind in their dorm to write up a first draft of their essay due in before the next full moon.

“I know you said you’ve had enough of him,” he whispers into his ear, breathing heavily as if he’d ran all the way from their dorm to the Great Hall. He doesn’t need to specify who he’s talking about. “But there’s blood in the bathroom.”

Remus keeps talking, but James doesn’t hear it, his blood rushing in his ears. He pushes away his porridge, stands, and runs directly to their dormitory, using every shortcut he knows, uncaring of whether other students, or even the Professors, see him in his haste to get to Sirius. Sirius had promised on James’s life he would do this again, no matter what happened, but they’ve taken it too far.

His lungs are burning by the time he bursts in through their dormitory door, silent sobs taking the remainder of his breath away. Sirius is there, stalk still, eyes wide with – Merlin, James would rather die than see that expression on his face because of him – fear, looking positively dreadful as he turns to stare at James. Without thinking, James strides straight up to him and takes his face in his hands.

“Please,” he begs, uncaring of how desperate he sounds as his voice breaks, “please tell me you’re not hurting yourself again.”

Anger flashes across Sirius’s face and the fear and, behind that, hope, that had been in his eyes moments ago is gone, replaced by a familiar indignant fury and Sirius draws away.

“I haven’t! I promised you I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

James wishes he believed him, he really does, but if Remus saw blood, enough blood to worry him, then he can’t risk it.

“Stop lying to me!” he shouts and reaches for Sirius’s elbow. He dares not grab for his wrists.

“Fuck you, James,” Sirius snarls, and pushes back the sleeves of his robes to show his wrists, silver scars crisscrossing the veins there. There are no new cuts, only older ones James knows too well, has felt a thousand times when he’s reached for Sirius’s wrists, his hands, little raised lines under his searching fingertips.

Relief should overwhelm James, but it doesn’t. Instead, he finds his panic only rising, threatening to cut off his breath entirely.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, and Sirius looks so livid he would’ve been scared, except Sirius would never hurt him, and he’s always more scared for Sirius then himself. “Strip. C’mon, I know you’ve done it other places before.”

This is insane, and he wants to be sick. He’s actually going to be sick, he thinks, as Sirius rips his robes off with a furious flourish and starts unbuttoning his shirt. It shouldn’t be like this, his first time seeing Sirius nearly naked this close up shouldn’t be when Sirius is so angry James can’t look at his face and he’s so scared of losing him he’s going to push him away entirely, yet Sirius unbuttons his shirt and throws it onto the floor, and James says nothing, saying nothing at all until Sirius is there in just his boxers, chest heaving, looking to all the world like he’d on the verge of tears. He probably is, James’s vision in blurring with his own unshed ones.

“I’m sorry,” he cries, letting the tears split from his eyes unchecked, and closes them as if it will help things. The scars are, as the ones on his wrists, old and silver, littered over his thighs and stomach, a strangely beautiful ode to all the times Sirius heart has broken before, but not this one. “I’m sorry,” James begs again, and knows it might not be enough. His hands tingle with his longing to touch him; he doesn’t dare reach out, knowing Sirius will flinch away from him now, and that he can’t watch that.

“I was shaving, and I cut my cheek, you mad fucking wanker!” Sirius shouts at him, stepping back and pulling all his clothes back on. Now that he’d said it, James can see the tiny nicks on his favourite face, accompanied now by tears as Sirius loses the battle with his own emotions. “My magic gets uncontrollable when I’m upset, you know that, I can’t use a magical razor.”

James does know that, had watched as his dad had taught Sirius how to shave like a muggle when Sirius had almost sliced his own ear off shaving normally in the summer after he left Grimmauld Place. He runs both his hands through his hair to stop them from reaching for Sirius and looks into the shattered grey eyes he loves so much. He says nothing.

“You said – I heard you tell Peter and Remus you didn’t want to look after me anymore, so I went and looked after myself, so you wouldn’t have to, since I’m such a burden,” Sirius snarls, voice cracking on every other word, and James can’t help himself when he takes Sirius’s hand. Surprisingly, Sirius allows it, but doesn’t return James’s iron grip.

“I was lying,” James admits, just as broken as Sirius. “I would look after you every day until I day, if it meant you were still here.”

He doesn’t mean here at Hogwarts, or here in Scotland, or even here with me, he means alive, and they both know it.

Sirius softens as he looks at James face, though he lets go of his hand. “But you don’t want to.”

“I do,” James insists, and means it. He is happy to take care of Sirius when he needs it, and he loves it when Sirius just wants it, loves getting to brush his hair and cuddle up with him in bed in fresh sheets he’s just changed, loves cooking his favourite food for him at home and watching Sirius’s whole face light up. “I always do.”

Sirius has redressed entirely now, and draws away, turning his back to James.

“Go back and finish your dinner,” he orders.

He wants to touch him, wants to touch him so badly his fingers jerk, his hands itch, but he knows he ruined it; he’s not sure Sirius will ever let him touch him again.

He leaves without a word, holding back his tears until he’d out of the common room, out of the castle itself and into the grounds, snow falling in great fluffy flakes around him. Outside with the cold biting at every inch of his bare skin, he let himself cry, collapsing to his knees and sobbing into the frigid air.

* * *

 

He awakes that night to the dipping of his bed and Sirius sliding into it. They lie face to face for a few moments in silence, not even their knees touching. Its closer than James thought he’d ever get to Sirius again, and he revels in it.

“Snape found out we were together,” Sirius says suddenly.

James opens his mouth to say something, but Sirius gives him a stern look and he lets him continue without interruption. “He said he was going to tell my mother what a disgusting son she had, in love with another boy, a-and James, she would’ve killed me. I honestly think she would’ve killed me. I was terrified, and I couldn’t tell you because you’d be so angry, and you would’ve gone and attacked him, and you’ve been so good at not letting things get to you. I just wanted to scare him, let him know I wasn’t to be messed with.”

Sirius takes a deep breath to steady himself and doesn’t push James’s hand away when he strokes down his cheek. He knew there was something wrong, had known Snape had done something to him, and Sirius had been so scared of James breaking his own rule he’d lied to him.

“I didn’t mean him to get that close, to even get close enough to see it was Remus. And then he did, and he said he would still tell mother, and I told him it didn’t matter anyway, because you hated me.” He sucks in a great, shuddering breath, and James watches, heart breaking, as tears spill from his eyes. “You hate me,” he says again, so quietly had there been any other noise, it would have drowned him out.

James can’t help himself, can’t let Sirius think he hates him even for a single second. He leans forward and kisses him, cupping his face gently, like Sirius is the most precious, most important thing in the world, because he is.

“I love you,” he says fervently. “I love you so much Sirius. I just hate that you lied to me.”

“I miss you,” Sirius says, and turns his head to kiss James’s palm. “I miss you all the time.”

“I miss you,” James can’t help but repeat back. “Stay.”

He won’t though, and James knows it. Having said all he means to say, he slips out the bed and goes back into his own. James can only hope he’ll finally sleep, knowing his brain has too much information to process now to sleep himself.

* * *

 

They don’t go back to normal, but it gets better. Sirius starts going to classes again, and then to meals, and then starts sleeping, fitfully, but at least he’s trying. James feels like he can breathe again for the first time in weeks, like air has been returned to the world along with Sirius’s presence in his life. After a few days he’s back talking to Remus and Peter, and within the week he and James are friends again, and a week after that, they’re best friends, inseparable.

Sirius saw James’s line, understood it, and had tried to save him from breaking it, even if it meant breaking it himself. He understands what James is trying to do, how he’s trying to change, and that, James decides, is enough, more than enough. But he’d broken a different line when he’d disbelieved Sirius, and he’s not sure he can ever fix that one.

They’re curled up on the sofa one afternoon, half asleep from the warmth of the fire, and James is so in love his heart feels like it might burst from his chest. The sadness comes with it, the same sadness he’s felt ever since the day he saved Snape and lost Sirius.

“Be my boyfriend,” he breathes, not really expecting a reply. He doesn’t deserve Sirius’s forgiveness, not after what he’s done, but he needs Sirius to know he wants him.

“Yes.” James must have misheard, or maybe Sirius did, because there is no way Sirius has agreed. He turns Sirius’s face to him and its brightened by a tiny, warm small, so full of hope that it takes James’s breath away.

“I want to be with you,” Sirius says. “I want to be with you always.”

James crashes their mouths together, kisses him until they’re both wet-eyed and breathless.


End file.
